What Does the World Look Like Outside of Westworld?

A lot of ink’s been spilled in recent weeks about the futuristic theme park at the center of HBO’s Westworld. How does the android-populated re-enactment of the post–Civil War American Wild West run? Do we really need another round of on-screen violence against women (even if the women are robots)? Who is Arnold?

It feels as though we’ve picked everything apart, yet there is one part of Westworld that remains relatively unexplored: the society beyond its borders. Here’s what we can reasonably assume about the world around Westworld, based on the show’s dialogue, context clues, and the current state of tech innovation.

1. The rich are richer than ever . . .

At $40,000 a day, Westworld is not a populist pastime. Even assuming this story (or at least its most updated timeline) is taking place, say, 50 years in the future, $40,000 in 2066 dollars still equals more than $11,000 in 2016. Assuming completing one loop for one guest takes, on average, a week, that’s a $77,000 vacation.

Then there’s this breakdown, as provided by a Redditor using the interactive Westworld Web site, which totals $6.8 million. That $40,000 doesn’t take fees into account—consultation, insurance, biometric monitoring, maintenance and child care, etc. Basically, this luxury, which seems to be enjoyed by a decent number of people despite being absurdly expensive, implies there is a solid elite class to whom this is available.

In Episode 5, during his saloon chat with Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the Man in Black (Ed Harris) implies that they’re now living in a post-scarcity economy. There may still be absurdly rich people who can pay for something like a Westworld getaway, but the M.i.B. says that now that everyone’s basic needs are taken care of, that society has thus become complacent. (That, of course, is the entire allure of Westworld: struggle, corporeal danger, literal existential crises.) He could be referring just to his economic class (the rich today already are comfortable, removed from many fleshier discomforts), but it’s quite likely that in this era, extreme poverty has become a thing of the past.

Video: Westworld Before They Were Stars

3. Contemporary fashion has gone monochromatic.

With poverty goes our sartorial flamboyance, it would seem. The only place it seems anyone wears colorful clothing is within Westworld. Staff all wear black, white, and shades of gray; so do 100 percent of the guests when we see them arriving on the train platform in Episode 2. The one exception: Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson), the newly revealed executive director of the Delos board, who—perhaps because she’s the boss?—wears a red dress when casually revealing her identity to a belligerently drunk Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman).

“Personality testing should have weeded you out in the embryo,” livestock tech Sylvester snipes at his colleague Felix during the fifth episode, when the aspiring coder balks at the sight of Maeve back in their laboratory. The idea that humans are now being genetically engineered to possess desirable qualities is hardly far-fetched; with the emergence of CRISPR, we’re almost there now. Still, there’s something darkly Brave New World about the way Sylvester says it, which is further bolstered by what comes next:

5. . . . But that hasn’t stopped the world (or just America?) from developing an ironclad caste system.

In his free time, Felix has been working on rebooting a dead synthetic sparrow borrowed from the park in an attempt to learn how to code better and rise up the Westworld ranks. Alas, ever the bummer, Sylvester reminds him of their lot: “You’re not an ornithologist, and you’re sure as hell not a coder. You are a butcher. That’s all you will ever be.”

Again, might be figurative, but it also follows that humans could now be engineered, either en masse (again, à la Brave New World) or according to how much you can spend on directing your own evolution, to exhibit differing I.Q.s, etc., which thus corresponds to various professional roles in society. You know, kind of exactly like how the hosts in Westworld are programmed. In last night’s episode, for example, Elsie is ecstatic as she recounts her plan to Bernard that, after saving the company from corporate espionage, she’ll ask the board for a promotion (including her living quarters and unlimited sun-deck time) . . . almost as though she could never have dreamed of having otherwise. And that’s not even taking into account those circulating Delos prosthetics theories. We’re all cyborgs here—if you can afford it!

Courtesy of HBO.

6. Institutional sexism and racism are still alive and well . . .

Don’t let the inclusion of guests and employees of color or high-ranking women executives fool you—the fact that a Wild West theme park is so successful necessarily implies certain things about its guests’ attitudes. Whether or not it’s intentional (though is it ever?) Westworld’s show-runners have created a universe in which paying customers get to rape as many robots and slaughter as many Native Americans (whose religion has already begun to toe the line of mysticism) as they can get their hands on. Judging by the popularity of the park, a man like Logan, who still rates women, both human and android, on a scale of 1 to 10, is hardly an outlier. (And if you need more convincing that white-male entitlement is still alive and well, I’ve got two words for you: Lee Sizemore.)

And while some may argue it’s a cathartic release of hate to lessen the chances of it happening “in the real world,” research (as well as, you know, just living) already tells us that abusive and even homicidal behavior, especially directed toward women, frequently escalates over time. Whatever happens in Westworld, you can bet it doesn’t stay in Westworld.

7. . . . as are infectious diseases.

In Episode 1, Ford tells us that disease is no longer an issue in the outside world. However, in Episode 2, right before Maeve wakes up on the operating table, Felix and Sylvester are discussing what they’re doing to her: a guest has infected her (or her flesh, anyway, which presumably would have corrupted her whole system) with MRSA, a bacterial infection often resulting from hospital stays and crowded living conditions. Which then leads us to our next assumption, or lack thereof . . .

Courtesy of HBO.

8. We might not even still be on Earth.

Look, it’s possible, even likely, that, during the course of this show, we won’t ever leave the Westworld company compound. Employees, even high-ranking ones, seem to live in glorified on-campus dorms and work odd hours constantly; if any of them have a genuine work-life balance, we haven’t seen it.

But if Maeve had escaped livestock, it’s possible she wouldn’t have had anywhere to go: Since we haven’t seen the outside world, what’s to say Westworld isn’t housed on a huge space station, à la *Blade Runner’*s off-world colonies or *Elysium’*s orbiting resort town? (We’re probably at least near Earth, if it’s plausible that the rogue woodcutter host could’ve seen the constellation Orion.)

If we’re on Earth, even if Westworld is basically a holodeck, the physical “playing field” of its A.R. would still have to be pretty big to accommodate guests (not to mention all its seemingly limitless underground testing and maintenance facilities). Assuming it is physically as big as it looks, one of two things would have to be true: the population would have had to shrink (though according to current projections, the U.S. is supposed to reach 400 million people by 2051) and large swathes of land were made available, likely in rural areas; or urbanization has simply gone so hog-wild that most people live in overcrowded cities (see: MRSA) and the park was easily built in a stretch of geography that has been completely deserted (and thanks to a post-scarcity economy, no longer necessary for crop-growing).

That said, just because most of the physical space has to be there doesn’t mean the environmental elements do: we haven’t seen any real weather in Westworld or at the employee quarters, and if corporations are still as powerful as the Man in Black’s seem to be, global warming likely continued progressing; the whole area could instead be protected by a biodome of some sort. (One question remains, though: Are all these damn flies—and all the plants, too, for that matter—as synthetic as the hosts, or do they all really live there?)

9. While perhaps the most lifelike, Westworld hosts aren’t the only android A.I. in the world.

This one is just logical: while it seems agreed upon that Westworld’s hosts are the most incredibly lifelike androids in existence, there’s no way that the technology could advance so far within the Westworld company and not beyond it. Call Westworld the Google of A.I. and everyone else the Bings and Yahoos, but it’s pretty likely, especially considering the projections of those in the field, that humanoid A.I. also exist and “work” in the real world, though they may look and act more like Old Bill than Dolores. But whether they’re recreational playthings or professional helpers—or something else entirely—is still anyone’s guess.

10. We’ve still learned basically nothing from science fiction.

The Singularity—the point at which A.I. surpasses human intelligence and gains sentience—lies at the heart of *Westworld’*s premise: pretty much everything hinges on whether the prisoners of this robotic hellscape become self-aware and fight back. This, in turn, hinges on the assumption that no one seems to have figured out how to prevent that from happening once and for all.

No matter how brilliant, the humans who have developed and interact with these synthetic slaves—Arnold in particular, as we’re told, but also everyone else who has anything to do with Westworld—are perpetual Icaruses, whether they’re taking their safety for granted or striving aggressively for something greater (synthetic consciousness). This means that the legitimate anxieties people have now, and have had about our own mortality since the modern science-fiction concept of androids took root in our culture, about A.I. have gone totally unheeded—or at least unheeded enough that one Dr. Frankenstein is legally able to set off a chain reaction of innovation that ultimately will make human beings irrelevant. Hello, Skynet.